I'm a Main Street business evangelist and marketing veteran with over 25 years in the trenches, and I write about small business financing as an employee at OnDeck and also at Forbes. I try to make the maze of small business finance accessible by weaving personal experiences and other anecdotes into a regular discussion around one of the biggest challenges facing small business today. The opinions expressed are my own and not those of OnDeck.

Missionary Or Mercenary? From Amazon To The Washington Post

It would be hard to dispute that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.comAmazon.com and now the owner of the Washington Post, is anything other than a success. Bezos had a successful career with a New York hedge fund when he decided to roll the dice, move to Seattle, and start Amazon.com.

Earlier this week, after hearing of his purchase of the Washington Post, I couldn’t help but reflect on a keynote address he gave at the Utah Technology Council’s 14th annual Hall of Fame Banquet.

After hearing his story and what motivated him to build Amazon.com, I’ve become a huge fan. You really have to admire someone who started in his garage and is now worth somewhere around $19 billion (that’s right billion with a “b”) dollars. He ascribed his success to “A lot of luck and planetary alignment,” but I believe there’s a lot more to it than that.

Bezos argued that there are two types of entrepreneurs, missionaries and mercenaries. Missionaries are motivated by a strong desire to provide a product or service to their customers with almost missionary-like zeal. Everything about what they do is designed to enhance the customer experience and provide value.

The mercenary is only interested in building a company to churn and burn—make some quick money with a quick sale, move on to the next business, and start all over again.

Interestingly, Bezos suggests in the long run, the missionary is more successful than the mercenary—and definitely lives a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

In addition to my self-imposed mandate to become a real missionary, three of the biggest lessons I took away from Bezos that night are:

Start with the customer and work backwards: “At Amazon, we’ve selected people who are thinking of ways we can improve the experience for our customers,” he said. “…We seek to do things in new and better ways … it’s creative disruption … in our case, we think of it as our job to build the best customer experience in retail we can.” Too many businesses create products they think should be successful, but don’t pay any attention to whether or not their offering resonates with their future customers. We should be asking ourselves, “Do I really understand my customers’ needs and does my product or service meet those needs?” When we start with the customer and work backwards, we’ll be investing in the products and services our customers will purchase and build a strong and thriving business while we’re at it. Amazon.com is a great example.

Don’t be afraid to walk like a toddler: “Businesses need to remember, it’s not bad to fall down. It doesn’t hurt too much,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, all that happens when we stop is that our operating margin will improve. It won’t be that bad.” I think Bezos and Thomas EdisonEdison are cut from some of the same cloth, “I’m not discouraged,” said Edison, “because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” For example, before they came up with the Kindle, Amazon had tried and failed at least three times to come up with the right platform for an eBook. “Sticking to the knitting is way more comfortable,” said Bezos. Unfortunately, in today’s world, the businesses that aren’t always trying to improve and grow eventually become obsolete and irrelevant. “Most people get criticized for experiments that failed,” he said. “They shouldn’t.”

When humans do more of anything, it gets easier: If we make it easy for our customers to do business with us and use our products, they will. Talking about the Kindle he said, “People who get a Kindle read four times as many books. We reduce the friction of reading.” What can we do to make it easier for our customers to do business with us? We should always be looking for ways our customers can quickly and easily gain value from working with us. I’m convinced therein lies success. What can we do to reduce the friction associated with using our products and services to gain value?

Although Amazon has become a huge company with technological interests that have gone beyond selling books, at their core is a desire to meet customers’ needs. They work backwards from the customer when developing new products or services, they aren’t afraid to make mistakes, and work very hard to make sure their customers get to value easier and faster than anyone else.

When asked when they plan to start opening traditional brick and mortar stores, he suggested it wouldn’t happen until they found a way they could provide more value to their customers with a traditional store. “Until then, we’d be just another store,” he said. I guess Bezos has found a way for the Washington Post to provide more value to its readers.

What are you doing to make your business more than just another store?

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